Chinese netizens lashed out at Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk after Beijing protested that its space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid hitting two of SpaceX’s satellites launched by Musk’s Starlink programme.
The satellites owned by Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk’s SpaceX aerospace company, had two close encounters with the Chinese space station, Tiangong on July 1 and Oct. 21, according to a report submitted by Beijing to the U.N.’s space agency earlier this month. Tiangong had to implement preventive collision avoidance control for safety reasons, China stated in a document published on the United Nations Office’s website for Outer Space Affairs.
The complaints are yet to be verified solely as SpaceX did not respond immediately to a request for clarification.
Chinese social media users lambasted Musk and his companies over the incident, with one user calling Starlink’s satellites as “just a pile of space junk,” while another labeled the satellites as “American space warfare weapons.” An user commented, “How ironic that Chinese people buy Tesla, contributing large sums of money so Musk can launch Starlink, and then he [nearly] crashes into China’s space station.”
An user under the name Chen Haiying remarked saying, “The risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, and the whole human race will pay for their business activities.”
SpaceX alone has deployed about 1900 satellites for the Starlink initiative which aims to provide internet access all around the Earth. With around 30,000 satellites and other space debris believed to be circumventing the planet, scientists have reached out to governments asking them to share data to reduce the risk of cataclysmic space collisions.
Despite Musk being a well-known figure in China, Tesla’s reputation has taken a hit this year following a surge of crashes, scandals, data storage concerns and poor customer service.
China began the construction of the space station in April following with the launch of Tianhe, the largest of its three modules. The station is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022 after four crewed missions.
